Manhattan Madness!

Hi Blog! It all started innocently enough. Our friends, Jane and Kim, who are from the UK, were planning a holiday. First, they wanted to go someplace warm like Hawaii, but it was just a little too far. (That's a lot of time zones from London to Maui.) The Caribbean was the next best destination, so they booked their flights.  In order to get there, they had to change planes at JFK Airport in New York. They thought, hey, since we're going all that way, why not stay a couple extra days in New York on our return and see our friend Hugh Jackman (a/k/a Wolverine) in his new play, The River? Oh, and, by the way, we'll see if Dave and Kathy can join us. And thus a brilliant holiday was formed. We can only report second-hand on what the beachy part of their holiday was like since they didn't invite us to come along on that leg of the journey (a situation that has since been rectified). Here is a glimpse of their island paradise.

Our story begins on Friday, November 14, 2014, with a with a train south to Philadelphia in order to catch another train north to New York City.  Upon arriving, it was just a short walk up 8th Avenue to 42nd and Times Square. We dropped our bags and picked up Jane and Kim and headed out to find adventure. As with all meetings of Merry Pranksters, the first order of business was to eat. So, on our way to the National September 11 Memorial Museum, we stopped for some Mexican food at Mariachi's. From left to right - Kim, Dave, Jane and Kathy.

After lunch, we stopped at the newly opened One World Trade Center. As you can tell from our attire, it was a bit brisk in New York City this past weekend.

We spent several hours walking around the museum and memorial. There was so much information to take in that we felt overwhelmed at times. Rather than try to summarize our experience in this blog entry, we are going to do a separate entry just for the museum and memorial. By the time we finished, it was getting dark. After a jolt from Starbucks, we found ourselves in Little Italy looking for the perfect "Little Italian" restaurant. We picked Caffe Napoli. As you can see, we had lots of yummy things to choose from.

After a quick subway ride back to the hotel, we called it a night. The next morning, we took off in search of more adventure, but first, we had to carbo-load at Roxy's Dinner. Then it was back to the subway and down to the South Ferry Terminal home of the Staten Island Ferry. Here, we are all bundled up and about to enjoy one of the best free activities anywhere.  Yes, the ferry ride is free!

As soon as you leave the south terminal, you get an amazing view of the Brooklyn Bridge.

A quick trip to the other side of boat and you get to see Lady Liberty.

If you hang out in the back of the boat, you get the New York City skyline.

Just wait a few more minutes, and you can have both the Statue of Liberty and New York City in one photo.

The ride takes about 25 minutes, so there is plenty of time to re-enact the "I'm the King of the World" scene from "Titanic":

Where the Hudson River meets the Upper Bay is very busy. There are loads of ferries, tugs and barges all making their way this way and that.

No sooner did we get to Staten Island than we turned right around and got back onto the boat for the return trip. There's not much to see on Staten Island, and besides we needed to get back to the hotel to freshen up for our date with Hugh. None of us knew very much about the play The River by Jez Butterworth -- other than the fact that Hugh Jackman was in it. We looked for liner notes in the Playbill, but there weren't any. Apparently, the author, Jez Butterworth, doesn't want to include any notes.  In fact, he doesn't even name his characters.  Hugh plays the Man and Laura Donnelly plays the Other Woman.

The Man likes to fly fish and waxes lyrically about said hobby, which made Dave and I feel very comfortable. The Man also seems to have relationship issues. We see various scenes set in The Man's cabin by a river. We’re left to wonder if the action takes place over different weekends. Is the Man reminiscing about past lovers? Or will he, like the Bear Grylls of Broadway, use the knife dangling from his belt to slice and dice his girlfriends the way he slices and dices a piece of fish? Performed in a semi-circle, we spent most of the time looking at the back of Hugh. It seemed fitting that the last thing we saw as we left the theater was the back of Hugh.

"The End"!

It wasn't really the end, just the end of the show. After a quick trip back to the hotel to freshen up for dinner, it was off to Tagine, a Morrocan restaurant. We were just in time to catch the sun setting in the building across from our hotel.

After dinner, we took one last stroll around Times Square. Got a few shots of the Chyrsler Building

and this New York City subway car that was rescued from the Mojave Desert by Asics Running Store.

We bid a fond farewell to the bright lights, as Jane and Kim had an early morning flight. On Sunday morning, we took our morning "coffee walk" in Central Park and, after a hearty breakfast at the Brooklyn Dinner, we made our way back to Penn Station and began our journey home.

Thanks, Jane and Kim, for sharing your adventure with us!